


The Legend of the Grifter Sisters

by catchandelier



Category: Elder Scrolls
Genre: Blood, Death, Dunmeri children, Fantastic Racism, Gen, Period-Typical Racism, Period-Typical Sexism, Period-Typical Underage, Racism, Racist Language, Thieves Guild, pre-story ugly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-20
Updated: 2014-05-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 22:05:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1664135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catchandelier/pseuds/catchandelier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story in which a trio of sisters (and one guy who will not fuck the fuck off) attempt to not die, starve, or be killed. There is also a great deal of theft. Unlicensed theft.<br/>And racism. Can't forget the racism.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Saryacshi gro-Gurak is the bastard daughter of Gurak gro-Bagrat; her half-sisters, Fevarli and Saryambi, helped her steal an expensive belt and pair of shoes- an expensive ring, much too good for the Old Fucker’s hand- a good skooma pipe, but he won’t miss it; a journeyman’s alembic, calcinatory, and retort; a master’s mortar and pestle, several bottles of Mazte, several bottles of Skooma in varying qualities- from Shit to Shittier; small amounts of Moon Sugar sparking on the fingertips, and various small saleable items- all of them in sacks on Fevarli and Saryacshi’s backs as Saryambi’s too young to be anything but a lookout anyhow, and they won’t get a chance like this anytime soon again. It’s the ash, y’know- sometimes the wind and the gods kick it up and throw it ‘round, make it scream with voices and cry like the Old Fucker when he’s in the skooma and they’ve gotta go, says Saryacshi, they’ll die sure as ash is ash if they stay.

Ma’s dead and gone- gone to Vivec when there was a Vivec, and then the Moon Fell and burnt the world- that’s what the Old Fucker moans in his sleep sometimes, the lazy liar. When all three girls know that Ma just ran off with some Orsimer who turned her head with pretty words and blinded her with bright coins and gone she is, gone she’ll stay- and Saryambi’s too young or too stupid to blame her for not taking her daughters with her, too young or too stupid to not be angry and sad. Or she just doesn’t care- it’s hard to tell with Saryambi. Or maybe Saryambi knows her mother is really dead because she noticed the blood-stink on the Orsimer man who took Ma away and for some reason it’s like- like the ash that’s always everywhere and always falling and choking everything down, it’s like it fell into her heart and head and eyes and made everything dusty and dead and empty inside of her sometimes.

Like that, y’know.

 

The Three Thief-Sisters took their loot- heavy sacks of stolen goodies, some of which was simply food, and not a weapon between them- before he could get his head together enough to care- skooma being what it is, it would take him more than a week to realize something was wrong- and they fled the plantation in the dead of night, heading south towards what the Old Fucker called Vivec when he was deep in his cups and weeping for days gone- the only thing there now was a lake of boiling water. Saryacshi wouldn’t say how she knew, though Fevarli suspected- Saryambi was too young to think too hard about much more than the current moment and a simple instruction, which made her a fine lookout, but a terrible sleuth… or maybe it was the creeping realization that there was something cold and dying where her heart should have been, something-

Fevarli suspected her sister of relations with a Khajit who still came around sometimes; some rat-furred sneak who had looked at her, and Saryambi, and Saryacshi especially with something like the way the Old Fucker looked at his Skooma pipe, and oh, how she longed to flee his gaze- but Saryacshi was the oldest and Saryacshi was always very nearly right. Or, at the least, usually not completely wrong, which was almost always good enough.

And Saryacshi said that if they got to the right part of the banks of the boiling river, firstly, they wouldn’t be cooked like a ashyam, don’t be stupid Fev, an’ second there’d be a boat that had a spell on it- shut _up_ Fev, there is so magic like that! And they could get in the boat, and, and it would take them over the lake and they wouldn’t cook like ashyams and the lake would take them to the sea where-

 

“What, a rat-Khajit with hungry eyes will help us?”

“Yeah.”

“No. A rat-Khajit with hungry eyes will eat us all up, and we won’t never see the sky again.

“We’ve never seen the sky.”

“But if he “helps” us, we never will.”

“Fine, then. What d’you say we should do?”

“Get to the lake, get in the boat, but don’t get on the rat’s ship- get on some different one.”

“Th’only other ships be goin’ to th’Black Marsh- s’Argonian country.”

“well then, Sarya- I guess we’re goin’ to the Black Marsh. Right Fev?”

“Sounds about right.”

 

And Saryambi just nodded, possibly to herself, and followed in the long steps of her older sisters- well, long to her, as if they had been following in the steps of that rat-Khajit, all three sister’s would have been at least one horse-length behind him.

Short legs will do that.

As it stood, they were at Vivec the following morning- whether or not that’s an accurate measure of time is up for debate, as all three girls had taken more than a few swigs of Mazte on the journey to keep their strength and spirits high. So very high.

Still, they got to Vivec before the week was out, and in high spirits besides- on the journey, they had come across a crumpled body and under the body was a closed clay vessel full of saltrice and a bundle of ragged fabrics; the fabrics were dresses for some highborn lady, probably the dead thing covering them- stupid lady. Shoulda left the clothes and run with the rice- not much more on her, sadly. Sturdy pair of boots- too large for all of them, but no sense in leaving them either; a necklace with a close-box kind of pendant on the end with a pair of painted people and some locks of hair- that gets left behind. It makes no sense to anger a dead-woman these days- they had the tendency to not stay dead. A set of heavy veils- enough for each of them to wrap their faces from the ash, cloaks and thick socks go over their think socks and then their chalpis aren’t digging into their feet anymore.

Saryambi might be smallest and youngest, but she’s strong enough to carry the extra clothes and the saltrice claypot on her back, and the Sister-thieves might be thieves, but they have not lived so long in the wind-screaming shade of Vivec-that-was, of Vivec-no-more, to be dumb enough to not pray for the dead so they’ll _stay dead_. And they do- the Sister-thieves pray for that dead thing crumpled under the ash. The crumpled thing does not stir when their prayer is finished, and the sisters walk on; a set of boulders and a boat with a pole in the bottom, and Saryacshi was right this time.

And none of them wants to find out whether or not Fevarli’s right this time.

 

‘Three little Sister-thieves/ floating in a boat

Over boilin’ water/ three Thieves float

Three little Sister-thieves/ poling ‘cross th’Bay

Through th’boilin’ water/ on their way

Heat is a-boundless/ and ash is thick

Three little Sister-thieves/ working out a trick

Sister-sister-sister/ where’d you go

Sister-sister-sister/ ashes like snow

Sister-sister-sister/ life is harsh

Sister-sister-sister/ on the Black Marsh!

A-R-G-O, A-R-G-O/ lizard skins and out you go!’


	2. Chapter 2

Saryacshi gro-Gurak and her sisters, Fevarli and Saryambi, floated out of Crater Lake, using the pole to push towards where a light was glowing on the front of their boat, flicker flicker of magic tingling against the body and buzzing in the teeth. Like a game they played sometimes before Ma died and gone- colder warmer, warmer, right! and then- follow the sparking magic arrow long enough and the Sister-thieves are in rolling salt-stinking waves.

The sisters float in the boat that sailed through the boiling Lake over a city-that-died and Saryambi wonders if anyone is left to pray for a whole city to stay quietly dead because, because- because a person is a living thing, yeah? and a city’s just a god’s whole handful of living things all plopped down together and then the Moon Crashed Down and killed them all- so who’s to say that they aren’t down there screaming in the boiling waves, trying to lift the fallen Moon up so’s they could have their unquiet vengeance on those with still-beating hearts. And who’s to say there’s anyone left alive who knows the words of the prayers and the songs to put all’s them that died to their quiet rest?

Fevarli hates the gods-be-damned ocean. It fucking bounces and shit. What shitty god makes a thing that bounces and shit? A shitty god, that’s what. Fucking ocean. Making her all dizzy and feeling like what happens when you eat an ashyam before you clean it and also a piece of moonsugar when you’re not supposed to have any that day and urk- oh, oh gods, puking is the worst when there’s nothing _in_ you because your stomach just keeps _trying_ -

Saryacshi is doing some careful figuring and calculifications- namely, if she steers the boat that-away instead of this-away the arrow is pointing to, she’s pretty sure they’ll end up able to sidle real sneak-like to the side of an Argonian ship- this time of morning, before the sunrise, well; lizards need heat to liz, is all she’s saying. And, thankfully, Saryacshi’s right again- the ship is sidled up to real quiet and still-style, and the Sister-thieves Three Dunmeri climb the rigging of an Arogonian ship, sneak aboard and secret themselves behind heavy crates and bolts of fabrics.

Come sunrise- or, it should be said, a gradual lightening of the burnt-land ashlands to visible and bleak- the ship sails for the Black Marsh. Saltrice and mazte, and then one dim-bright day all the saltrice is scattered over the rough planking and the sisters dine that night on rats with bellies stretched tight by saltrice- a brazier from a different part of the hold, so left because… well, who knows, other than it’s odd tendency to wobble. Cooked the rats a treat, and somehow Saryambi got her hands on a knife. Fevarli doesn’t have it in her, not on the gods-be-damned sea, to fight it off her- let her moon-brained little sister have the knife, let her have it.

Saryacshi is too full of meat and rice and drink- full for the first time she can remember, no quiet certainty that she could eat some more, no ache behind her ribs whining for more- and falls asleep before Saryambi starts to carve; only Fervarli sees her baby sister, moon-brained sister, take the bones and carve them fine- needles and beads and dice take form under her small fingers, and her knife dulls and finally breaks sometime on the journey. Saryambi doesn’t seem to care all that much- just combs her hair out and braids in her rat-bone beads and pins it all back with needles carved beautiful and fine.

Saryacshi redoes them all, because not a single one was even or straight.

Fervarli just tells her sister that she’s beautiful, and then curls up and tries not to think about the movement of the ship and the waves and her stomach.

And little Saryambi, youngest of the Thieves three, is still and quiet under her sister’s fingers, leaning away from the steady pulling against her scalp; long black hair being pulled through dark fingers tinged a pale greenish blue, woven into fine braids and festooned with delicately carved rat-bone beads, pinned up and back with needles carved thin. Quiet companionship in the stinking darkness; three little Dunmeri girl-children curled up together in ash –grimed cloth, waiting for something they have no way of knowing to notice.

 

Fervarli is the one who did it- and Fevarli can’t look her sister in the face too often, not anymore. So. She was the one who realized that the ship was stopped- her sickness had gone down to a place where she could sit up, could stand up, could almost fall over because she’d only been crawling and squatting and sometimes sitting up but she catches herself on the side of a crate in their little hideout in the hold of the Argonian ship and she smells- dirt.

Fervarli worked in the fields and scraped ashyams out of the ashy dirt and carried them back inside, got dirt and grime and the stink of ash ground into her skin, into her clothes, into her food- she knows the smell of dirt. She knows. How could she not?

And she smells dirt she’s never smelled before, dirt and something else- can’t tell what.

She knows now. What that something else was.


	3. Chapter 3

The Sister-thieves crept off the ship in the coldest part of the night- about the same time they got on the ship, honestly, creeping down the rigging in the coldest quiet and dipping into the salty water and swimming to the mucky shore and then heaving and crawling through thick black mud stinking and sticky and getting into every layer except the one next to the skin- they stole packs and leather gear, no point in taking things they couldn’t use but they can always use silver and gold and gemstones, and that knife was a shit knife if it pulled out of its dazzling hilt so easily.

Don’t think about how you learned to swim, Saryacshi, don’t think about those days when the sky was so- blue, you think the name is, although you can’t remember, won’t remember, who taught you how to say that word. Don’t think about the lake when it was cold, and warm hands holding you up till you could do it yourself, don’t don’t won’t and don’t. Don’t think about teaching your sisters in the millpond, don’t don’t don’t. Can’t and won’t consider that Saryambi is too little to swim against the currents, of course she is, and it’s only because of Fevarli’s great strength that she was saved and don’t think about the warm voice that used to joke and say that maybe Fev was the eldest because she was much too big for your hand-me downs don’t think about who taught you to braid hair don’t think about it, no. Won’t.

Can’t.

A path appears in the mudsucking grasses and reeds, lashing against what little skin is exposed from under oversized and stinking clothes, ash sluicing off in murky rivulets of stinking black water. Black Marshes. Hah.

The dirt isn’t dirt- it’s mud. Sorry-bee ends up on Sarya’s back, somehow, and Fev is carrying her pack and Sarya’s pack because there wouldn’t be space on a narrow back otherwise and the mud is stinking and squelches wetly and sucks on their feet. They trudge along a weaving path of reeds-that-cut and mud-that-stinks and flies bright and flashing dance around their heads and bite their skin. Some way or another, the sun rises- and the hot muggy marsh becomes hotter and muggier and stinkier. And the sky is-

(Like their mother was in the light thrown by the lake when it wasn’t boiling with the rage of the dead.)

 

Staggering through the reeds and grasses, so tall they sort of just appear in a break between two long berms of grass, three Sister-Thieves. Squelch along, they do- through mud that stinks and sucks and over rocks that burn with heat and finally up the side of a heavy rope net and into somewhere dry-er and cool-er and blessedly away from the glaring sun and the sky so (blue) ugly and strange.

And it’s there that Fevarli does what she did to make her unable to look Saryacshi in the face- see’s a monster she, does monster monster, a monster with a long neck and a long face and big, ugly legs, four of em with hammers for feet, and a long thing on the not-head end that flicks and whirls and what kind of gods make a creature have a sword for a tail? And Fev screams high and afraid and the monster rears and it’s hammer-footed feet come flying and Sarya pulls Fev out of the way and-

CRACK!

Goes her head against the monster’s hammer-shod foot and

d

                                                                                                                                                o

                                                                                                                                                                w

                                                                                                                                                                                n

    she goes with a gasp.


	4. Chapter 4

Blood seeps from where the monster struck her, and it’s Sarya’s blood, Sarya’s blood in the wood and dirt and straw on the ground and Sorry-bee pulls her to one side away from the monster and oh gods is she dead is her sister dead?

She’s still breathing.

And Fev can’t move can’t breathe and she collapses next to Sarya and sits there and shakes and can’t quite bring herself to pray for her sister because where were the gods when the Old Fucker’s drunken nights got more punchy than weepy and where were the gods when her mother went with that Orismer-liar man and never came back and where were the gods when that Khajit came creeping by and touched her sister so and made the bright spark in her eyes vanish in a crinkle of worry and fear?

Where were they then?

So no.

Fevarli doesn’t pray to the gods for her sister, Saryacshi.

She wonders sometimes, later, if she had prayed- if she had, would her sister not have-?

 

It’s Saryambi that saves them all from- well, she won’t exactly say. Fev certainly remembers screaming and the slimy iron-stink of blood on the wind, one day- and Sarya has woken up but briefly, eyes rolling in her head and twitchy dreams that make her whimper and they have to leave so much behind- can only take what they can wear and whatever Sorry-bee can carry which amounts to much more than Fev thought.

Three packs worth of stolen-wonders, all winnowed through with practical hands and carefully packed into and onto a little girl that could easily walk under the Monster’s barrel shaped middle and not even touch the bottom of it and Fev worries sometimes, at night, about her youngest sister because- she shouldn’t be that small.

She’s old enough to know that her sister should not be that small.

Fev wonders, sometimes, if there’s really all that much in an ashyam- is there really enough to make a little sister-girl grow into something not-so-little anymore? And she’s worried that the answer is- no.

The actual answer is yes- there is indeed enough in an actual ashyam to make a little Dunmeri grow into a not as little Dunmeri. However, care must be taken to clean all the ash off of an Ashyam, otherwise the Dunmeri will grow… strange.

 

Saryambi is smarter than her sisters think she is, isn’t half as moon-brained as they think- much more. Skeptical. And what kind of monster eats straw and makes the same sounds as the mill-mule? Something quite like the mill-mule, obviously, and it can’t help looking a bit odd.

They’re in an odd place, after all- can’t always be blindly trusting your eyes and screaming because you’re scared. If Saryambi had screamed every time she was scared, she wouldn’t have a voice anymore. That’s not to say that other people can’t scream if they’re scared- and someone, somewhere near where they are, is screaming- screaming and suddenly stopping and going silent. And Sorry-bee’s been a busy bee, gathering food and water and what she recognizes out of books as being medicinal plants and she’s been taking care of Sarya while she drifts in and out of the World and the Otherworld and she’s been making Fev eat and sleep and now this-

So she doesn’t scream, because there's no time for screaming or being afraid there’s only time to do. And do she does- she makes Fev put Sarya’s clothes on layer after layer, double wrap her head and don’t think about anything but the moment don’t can’t won’t, makes her get UP and put on every layer she can and put Sarya on her back, ties her on with that fancy belt they stole, packs up food and more medicine and puts on every clothing she can, stuffs her feet into sock after sock until they finally fit into the fancy shoes.

Sorry-bee stole a boat, because stealing is still stealing, even from those who are dead- even if they weren’t dead a few days ago, the stink of blood and the silence of that rush-and-muck lean-to on the bank of the swamp, quiet little boat with pontoons on the sides and bottles of something amber-green and gleaming ugly dark and scaled in her head, don’t touch them.

But take the boat, because a boat is not a green-scaled bottle of soul, and the owners are dead and won’t be using it anymore. The Marsh- and somehow, that seems more right than just an ordinary marsh, because the Boiling Lake used to be Vivec-that-died and who’s to say that the Marsh wasn’t a Forest once and then the sea washed the land away until only this was left?- will take their bodies, because, because… a soul and a body are only attached during life and they’re dead and their green-scaled liquid souls have dribbled away, evapor-somethinged into the Otherworld and gone now.

Boat. Row row row the boat.

Sorry-bee took the boat back to her sisters in the monster’s pen, and Saryambi is pretty sure that the monster is only a horse or a mule and not dangerous to them at all, barring the obvious fact of don’t can’t won’t and get UP Fev we have to go RIGHT NOW. And Fev does, still too afraid to question why her mostly-silent moon-brained and book-reading sister, the sister who took apart her pillow to see the feathers, the sister who unwove baskets and tore pages out of books, why is she now so certain that they have to do anything? The sister who once had a discussion with her shoes on whether or not they knew they were shoes?

That same sister made sure to put their skooma and moon sugar and alchemy tools were all taken with them, that their matze and their saltrice and things Fev was too fear-touched to make note of in a satchel over her shoulder to rest at her side and they’re going and gone out of the city Sorry-bee calls Festering Jewel and in the boat and gone. Gone.

Fevarli is too scared. And Saryacshi is don’t can’t won’t and can’t won’t don’t and why.

Why won’t she wake up?


	5. Chapter 5

Rocking in the warm blue tinted arms and she’s always wondered why her skin’s so much greener compared and Ma always says that it’s just how she is and not to worry but she does and then- striking pain on her head, her brow, just a sunburn, Ma said, don’t pick at it so Sarya- and coolness of leaves and a fever that made her skin itchy- Fevarli in danger MOVE- it stinks like death and blood and you should not trust that Orismer Ma, he’s dangerous, can’t you see?

Hot, hot water in the lake and she’s- she’s not there, she knows she’s not there because Ma never took her to the lake, never took her on a pontoon on the lake and it never stank like burning bodies

Made of ash and rising again and again and nothing seems to be stopping them oh gods oh gods and for a burning ash coated second Sarya wonders if maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to just die-

Agony and coolness over her brow. She’d forgotten how wonderful it feels to dunk your head in a rain-barrel after a hard day’s work and the sudden shock of her sunburn was enough to

Itchy itchy why is her head itchy

Can’t breathe

Cold

Cold

Cold

cold ma I’m so cold ma I’m so cold


	6. Chapter 6

It takes Saryambi two whole weeks to navigate through the Marsh and out to the sea-edge, and in those two weeks all Saryacshi does, aside from her usual soft moaning, is twitch and shiver in dreams best unremembered.

She’ll remember. But she won’t talk about it.

 

It’s the salt-stink of the sea and the steady hiss-crash of waves on wooden sides that make Fevarli snap out of her- whatever it is, she’s out of it now and watching her not-so-very-little sister row row row the boat quietly through the night. Sarya isn’t moaning quite as much, and seems to be settling into a sleep that’s real and healing now.

Stars and moonlight on murky waters dark and warm, and a boat with a real monster on the prow, and Three Sister-Thieves climb up a boat onto the deck of a Redguard ship, bound for Valenwood then Summerset Isles then Hammerfell- or at least, that’s what an ill Saryacshi half-hears before falling, at last, into a truly restful sleep.

The hold of the ship is a strange sort of welcoming- because there’s only so many differences between one ship and another, as there are only so many shapes a boat can take to get through the ocean, especially on the inside. The squeaking of rats and the stink of smoke, crates piled high and stacked neatly but not enough so that Sorry-be and Fev can’t shove a space into the darkness amidst the squeaking and the stink of crates of who even cares, lay their softly sleeping sister down on quickly stolen and strung hammock big enough for all three of them and the packs and out of the bilge water and away from the red-eyed rats.

Some miracle or wonder of Sorry-bee’s nature made her pack a better brazier, not the wobbly one from the Argonian ship, but a good one, a fine brass thing with a wide flat bottom and a narrow round top and it should be heavy but it isn’t, it isn’t at all.


End file.
